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Old 06-07-2020, 07:22 AM   #11
dataweaver
 
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Not necessarily. Ritual Magic is the base skill for Paths and Books; therefore they too are a form of Ritual Magic. And Path/Book magic had already been developed well before 4/e, first in GURPS Voodoo and then in GURPS Cabal. So I think its use in the Basic Set has to be understood partly as providing the option of republishing Path/Book magic.
GURPS Spirits, not GURPS Cabal. (Also, GURPS Old West and, in a radically different form, GURPS Castle Falkenstein.)

And I agree that the intent of 4e was to lay the groundwork for the return of 3e's Ritual Magic system. But as GURPS Thaumatology shows, that's not how it worked out. For better or worse, 4e uses Ritual Magic to refer to an alteration to the standard magic system's learning section, and the system that alters how Magic is cast to the Effect-Shaping Model or the Energy-Accumulation Model is now called Path/Book Magic.
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Old 06-07-2020, 09:22 PM   #12
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by AllenOwen View Post
Does Ritual Magic (B242) increase the time to cast spells? I am under the impression it does not, but I want to be certain.
Sort of. Ritual Magic gives you access to path skills which in turn let you cast spells on the fly with horrendous penalties. While page B242 doesn't reference it, check out Symbol-Drawing skill on p. B224. It's the key to making Ritual Magic seem more ritualistic; it helps with those penalties; and it takes however long the GM says it does.

That said, Symbol-Drawing was originally introduced with 3rd edition's version of Ritual Magic, in GURPS Voodoo as I recall, which is now 4e's path magic, from GURPS Thaumatology Chapter 5 (and taken to its ultimate manifestation in this thread: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=162430).

Last edited by Gef; 06-07-2020 at 09:26 PM.
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Old 06-08-2020, 01:08 AM   #13
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by dataweaver View Post
And I agree that the intent of 4e was to lay the groundwork for the return of 3e's Ritual Magic system. But as GURPS Thaumatology shows, that's not how it worked out. For better or worse, 4e uses Ritual Magic to refer to an alteration to the standard magic system's learning section, and the system that alters how Magic is cast to the Effect-Shaping Model or the Energy-Accumulation Model is now called Path/Book Magic.
It doesn't seem to me that I was denying that. What I said was

It depends on which system you use. For example, Path and Book Magic, in GURPS Thaumatology, has a base time for most rituals of between 15 and 60 minutes. That's not specified for other systems; for example, Ritual Magic that uses the standard spells in the Basic Set isn't stated to take any longer.

It is the case that Path and Book Magic normally uses Ritual Magic as its base skill; so it is clearly ONE case of "Ritual Magic."
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Old 06-08-2020, 03:13 PM   #14
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
That's the term used in Basic (B238) / Magic (M12) for group casting (involving a "ritual", though it's not "Ritual Magic"). Casting time is x10 in that case.
I always wondered how that would work for Recover Energy since it doesn't seem to have a casting time.

A big draw in Ceremonial Magic is the potential of pumping in energy to raise your effective skill with a spell, which could be really useful for low-IQ guys with just 1 point in Recover Energy to get up the required minimum 15 needed to benefit from it.

But with RE also lacking a base cost there's nothing to base a % on.

Which is why I like the idea of treating it like 1 to cast / 1 to maintain with the skill 15 reducing that to 0 under normal casting.

Ceremonial can't benefit from skill-based cost reductions so it would generally be undesirable unless it was something like having spectators power your RE for you. How efficient depends on what you declare the duration to be, which the GM would need to house rule if rewriting this to try and resemble other spells.

Casting time could normally just be 1 second (10 ceremonial) but maybe work like one of those "requires concentration" spells where the duration will end as soon as your concentration is broken?

TBH not exactly sure how interruption-threshold for the calm/rest required for Recover Energy is meant to work. Like I assume you can't cast other spells (that's not restful) when recovering energy, just like spellcasting would interfere with normal rest.
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Old 06-08-2020, 06:36 PM   #15
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

Common misconception, but you have to 'know' (as in have a base skill) a spell at 15+ to cast it ceremonially. Energy for skill only increases effective skill, so it would not let a caster with a base skill 14- cast a spell ceremonially.
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Old 06-09-2020, 07:40 AM   #16
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Common misconception, but you have to 'know' (as in have a base skill) a spell at 15+ to cast it ceremonially. Energy for skill only increases effective skill, so it would not let a caster with a base skill 14- cast a spell ceremonially.
By RAW you do, but if the GM decides when designing or modifying the setting that you don't need that, then you don't need that.
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Old 06-09-2020, 09:45 AM   #17
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

Yes, but that applies to anything. A GM could also just have Recover Energy world at any skill level if they wanted.
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Old 06-09-2020, 11:41 AM   #18
Plane
 
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Common misconception, but you have to 'know' (as in have a base skill) a spell at 15+ to cast it ceremonially. Energy for skill only increases effective skill, so it would not let a caster with a base skill 14- cast a spell ceremonially.
*rechecks M12*

it's the very first sentence staring me in the face yet I somehow managed to overlook it when coming up with these convoluted theories about how guys w/ Enchant at lower skill levels could just forcefeed extra FP to get it to work....

It looks like I'd need some other kind of in, such as "Boost Intelligence" (M37) but I think that only lasts about a second so it wouldn't exactly help with something requiring at least 10 seconds to cast... at best it MIGHT help with a spell that took only 1 second to cast but even then I'm not sure...

I did have one interesting idea though...

Assuming it could help with a one-second spell, what if you cast it and then cast M135 "Wisdom"?

You can increase IQ up to 5 points that way. It has a "cannot be raised higher than caster's" limit which is where Boost IQ might come in handy since you could temporarily have a higher IQ so as to be able to have a higher cap on using Wisdom?

Unfortunately Wisdom's boost doesn't help with spells so you'd need some kind of modified version of the spell (cosmic enhancement?) to have that help out your cermonial magic.

In terms of base skill I guess there's only IQ/magery/skill points that matter? Do you know if the -5 for Low Mana would matter, ie you'd need to know it at 20 normally to do Ceremonial in Low Mana?
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Old 06-11-2020, 11:54 AM   #19
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

I don't have my books handy. Does the “ceremonial only” limitation to Magery grant an exception to that rule? If it doesn't, it probably should.
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Old 06-11-2020, 11:10 PM   #20
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Default Re: Ritual Magic

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Originally Posted by dataweaver View Post
I don't have my books handy. Does the “ceremonial only” limitation to Magery grant an exception to that rule? If it doesn't, it probably should.
T23 doesn't appear to mention it.

Nor does T24 for "Enchantment Only" magery

Plus it would be important for One College Only (Enchantment) too...

Enchantment MUST be ceremonial after all, which I think is why it has the skill 15 requirements too.

One thing Thauamtology does hint at is an optional rule where you would not need skill 15 to perform Ceremonial Magic anymore...

T109:
"If the GM wishes to make item manufacture especially common, at the cost of there being a lot of low-quality items, then he can relax the required minimum Power of 15"

That in essence means you don't need minimum skill in both enchantment skills of 15 anymore... or rather I see now at closer glance the top of the right column says exactly that:
This of course negates the usual rule requiring a minimum spell skill of 15 for ceremonial magic.
Maybe a perk for 'Rules Exemption' could be purchased by characters who want to ignore that limit?

It gives two guidelines:

"Less powerful items might only work in high mana"
"10 or less might require VERY high"
kinda loose, I think there is a more perfect way to implement this, actually...

T58 "continuous mana" breaks mana into smaller increments instead of fixed quanta. High is +3 to +7 (avg 5) so needing 3-7 bonus to make stuff ranging 11-14 to work, a simpler way would just be to use continuous mana and you just need whatever bonus brings power up to 15.

T60 has notes on how to rewrite mana booster/damper for Continuous Mana and it's gorgeous.
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